The present disclosure relates generally to building management systems. The present disclosure relates more particularly to systems and methods for sharing health and performance data between devices within a building management system (BMS).
A building management system (BMS) is, in general, a system of devices configured to control, monitor, and manage equipment in or around a building or building area. A BMS can include a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system, a security system, a lighting system, a fire alerting system, another system that is capable of managing building functions or devices, or any combination thereof. BMS devices may be installed in any environment (e.g., an indoor area or an outdoor area) and the environment may include any number of buildings, spaces, zones, rooms, or areas. A BMS may include a variety of devices (e.g., HVAC devices, controllers, chillers, fans, sensors, etc.) configured to facilitate monitoring and controlling the building space. Throughout this disclosure, such devices are referred to as BMS devices or building equipment.
In some BMS systems, there are a large numbers of devices or nodes. These nodes may all communicate via a network associated with the BMS, such as over an IP network. Further, these nodes may include intelligence, allowing each node to make decisions independent of a supervisory controller. As technology progresses, the number of intelligent nodes and devices will increase, amplifying the role of such intelligent devices and nodes in modern BMS systems.
However, as these devices perform some or all of their functions without a supervisory controller, a change in the performance of one or more of the nodes may go unnoticed until the system is adversely affected. For example, a failed actuator or sensor can result in loss of HVAC functions in a large portion of a building, potentially resulting in lost revenue. Further, in large distributed systems, it may take considerable time to determine which node has failed, further increasing the risk of downtime. Additionally, many systems require devices to have pre-established identities and/or hierarchical arrangements of the devices to properly monitor the health of the devices. Accordingly, it would be desirous to have systems and methods which can analyze the health and performance of all intelligent devices on a network in real time to provide an indication of a failing health of the device.